A while back, I argued that by World War I, no industrialized country in their right mind would employ things like armor and metal face masks. I was shown insistances of German use of metal armor chest plating, but that was for the most part for specialized units rather than the regular infantry.

On my trip to the Virginia War Museum, however, I discovered that there was an attempt by the Americans to use helmets with face shields that looks like something out of a King Arthur book rather than the early 20th century.

These were eventually abandoned however for practicality reasons as the US was trying to crank out equipment as fast as possible and this was just an unnecessary addition. But it's quite possible that other countries might have had such things, possibly based on tradition.

Anyway, so I'm going to open up the floor to ideas for industrial era infantry units with mostly an alternate history twist to it....

Post pics and such, ideas...

I never knew they actually tried enclosed helmets like that... Interesting. I wonder when we'll see this idea surface again. I suppose with updated material you could make it much lighter, and the addition of video/infrared equipment might mitigate the loss of visibility somewhat.

By the way did you get that wheelchair I sent you?

Yes, I did. Thank you :)

The Industrial Samurai could be in this catagory no?

Heh..
Industrial Spearman :p

I could tryand see if I could dig up some pictures of the soldiers in Tenku no Shiro, Rapyuta (Castle in the Sky), who wore some rather Victorian armor (looked kinda like a cross between German and Japanese from that period). I also would not be adverse to contributing toward such a Steampunk mod (I know that Ghenghis Kev's already started on one, but I haven't seen him around since he first posted two weeks ago).